Sunday, February 13, 2005

Speeding Fine
In Australia, if you travel over 5km over the speed limit, you get a speeding fine. If you do get caught speeding, they send you a letter within 2 to 3 weeks telling you how much you have to pay, and how many demerit points you got.

Well, on the 25th of February, my dad told me to take my sister to school to buy books before school started on the 31st of January. On the way home, I passed a police officer holding a speed gun. When I passed him, I realised that I might have been travelling at or above 65kmph in a 60km area.

You see, I get nervous when there are cars behind me when I'm driving because they might crash into the back of my car if I brake or something.

What I do is I usually speed up a bit, usually by 5km, to get ahead of the cars behind me. As I was driving along Main Street that day, there were two cars behind me. I'm a P-plater (inexperienced driver), so I couldn't really tell if they were driving too close to me or what, I can't judge distace that well.

So I sped up, and before passing the police officer, I was travelling at 63kmph and speed was rising. Normally if I see a speed radar or a police officer, I would slow down, but when I saw the police officer, he was standing next to a phone booth so I thought he was a telecommunications employee or something.

Just before I passed the police officer, I noticed that the cars behind me had slowed dow for some reason, and so I started to slow down again. But by then I realised that the guy standing by the phone booth was actually a police officer holding a speed gun. And when I checked my speed, it was 63kmph again, but I think that when I passed the guy, it might have been 65kmph or over.

My driving record has no blemishes on it. No previous speeding fines, no demerits. Although I did have a car accident that was probably my fault, but I didn't get punished for that. I was worried that I would get a fine and/or demerit points, and if my dad knew, I'd get in trouble because it's his car, so he might have to pay the fine.

However, it has been weeks now, and I still have got a fine, I guess I wasn't speeding. It figures because even though I travel at or a little above the speed limit, every single car I come accross seems to be able to overtake me. So either everyone else is speeding, or there's something wrong with the speedometer on my dad's car.
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